IN the course of our walk Milverton promised to read the following essay
on Recreation the next day. I have no note of anything that was said
before the reading.
RECREATION.
This subject has not had the thought it merits. It seems trivial. It
concerns some hours in the daily life of each of us; but it is not
connected with any subject of human grandeur, and we are rather ashamed
of it. Schiller has some wise, but hard words that relate to it. He
perceives the pre-eminence of the Greeks, who could do many things. He
finds that modern men are units of great nations; but not great units
themselves. And there is some room for this reasoning of his.
Our modern system of division of labour divides wits also. The more
necessity there is, therefore, for funding in recreation something to
expand men’s intelligence. There are intellectual pursuits almost as
much divided as pin-making; and many a man goes through some intellectual
process, for the greater part of his working hours, which corresponds
with the making of a pin’s head. Must there not be some danger of a
general contraction of mind from this convergence of attention upon
something very small, for so considerable a portion of a man’s life?
What answer can civilisation give to this? It can say that greater
results are worked out by the modern system; that though each man is
doing less himself than he might have done in former days, he sees
greater and better things accomplished; and that his thoughts, not bound
down by his petty occupation, travel over the work of the human family.
There is a great deal, doubtless, in this argument; but man is not
altogether an intellectual recipient. He is a constructive animal also.
It is not the knowledge that you can pour into him that will satisfy him,
or enable him to work out his nature. He must see things for himself; he
must have bodily work and intellectual work different from his
bread-getting work; or he runs the danger of becoming a contracted pedant
with a poor mind and a sickly body.
I have seen it quoted from Aristotle, that the end of labour is to gain
leisure. It is a great saying. We have in modern times a totally wrong
view of the matter. Noble work is a noble thing, but not all work. Most
people seem to think that any business is in itself something grand; that
to be intensely employed, for instance, about something which has no
truth, beauty, or usefulness in it, which makes no man happier or wiser,
is still the perfection of human endeavour, so that the work be intense.
It is the intensity, not the nature, of the work that men praise. You
see the extent of this feeling in little things. People are so ashamed
of being caught for a moment idle, that if you come upon the most
industrious servants or workmen whilst they are standing looking at
something which interests them, or fairly resting, they move off in a
fright, as if they were proved, by a moment’s relaxation, to be
neglectful of their work. Yet it is the result that they should mainly
be judged by, and to which they should appeal. But amongst all classes,
the working itself, incessant working, is the thing deified. Now what is
the end and object of most work? To provide for animal wants. Not a
contemptible thing by any means, but still it is not all in all with man.
Moreover, in those cases where the pressure of bread-getting is fairly
past, we do not often find men’s exertions lessened on that account.
There enter into their minds as motives, ambition, a love of hoarding, or
a fear of leisure—things which, in moderation, may be defended or even
justified; but which are not so peremptory, and upon the face of them
excellent, that they at once dignify excessive labour.
The truth is, that to work insatiably requires much less mind than to
work judiciously, and less courage than to refuse work that cannot be
done honestly. For a hundred men whose appetite for work can be driven
on by vanity, avarice, ambition, or a mistaken notion of advancing their
families, there is about one who is desirous of expanding his own nature
and the nature of others in all directions, of cultivating many pursuits,
of bringing himself and those around him in contact with the universe in
many points, of being a man and not a machine.
It may seem as if the preceding arguments were directed rather against
excessive work than in favour of recreation. But the first object in an
essay of this kind should be to bring down the absurd estimate that is
often formed of mere work. What ritual is to the formalist, or
contemplation to the devotee, business is to the man of the world. He
thinks he cannot be doing wrong as long as he is doing that.
No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked
from morning till night and then carefully locked up, the register of
crimes might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human
nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things?
It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions,
circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men’s
natures are developed.
* * * * *
Again, there are people who would say, “Labour is not all; we do not
object to the cessation of labour—a mere provision for bodily ends; but
we fear the lightness and vanity of what you call recreation.” Do these
people take heed of the swiftness of thought—of the impatience of
thought? What will the great mass of men be thinking of, if they are
taught to shun amusements and the thoughts of amusement? If any
sensuality is left open to them, they will think of that. If not
sensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for “the cause of God,” as they
would call it. People who have had nothing else to amuse them have been
very apt to indulge themselves in the excitement of persecuting their
fellow creatures.
Our nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe in
the sovereign efficacy of dulness. To be sure, dulness and solid vice
are apt to go hand in hand. But then, according to our notions, dulness
is in itself so good a thing—almost a religion.
Now, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted
Anglo-Saxons. Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar
melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months together would
frown away mirth if it could—many of us with very gloomy thoughts about
our hereafter—if ever there were a people who should avoid increasing
their dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. “They took
their pleasure sadly,” says Froissart, “after their fashion.” We need
not ask of what nation Froissart was speaking.
There is a theory which has done singular mischief to the cause of
recreation and of general cultivation. It is that men cannot excel in
more things than one; and that if they can, they had better be quiet
about it. “Avoid music, do not cultivate art, be not known to excel in
any craft but your own,” says many a worldly parent, thereby laying the
foundation of a narrow, greedy character, and destroying means of
happiness and of improvement which success, or even real excellence, in
one profession only cannot give. This is, indeed, a sacrifice of the end
of living for the means.
Another check to recreation is the narrow way in which people have
hitherto been brought up at schools and colleges. The classics are
pre-eminent works. To acquire an accurate knowledge of them is an
admirable discipline. Still, it would be well to give a youth but few of
these great works, and so leave time for various arts, accomplishments,
and knowledge of external things exemplified by other means than books.
If this cannot be done but by over-working, then it had better not be
done; for of all things, that must be avoided. But surely it can be
done. At present, many a man who is versed in Greek metre, and
afterwards full of law reports, is childishly ignorant of Nature. Let
him walk with an intelligent child for a morning, and the child will ask
him a hundred questions about sun, moon, stars, plants, birds, building,
farming, and the like, to which he can give very sorry answers, if any;
or, at the best, he has but a second-hand acquaintance with Nature.
Men’s conceits are his main knowledge. Whereas, if he had any pursuits
connected with Nature, all Nature is in harmony with it, is brought into
his presence by it, and it affords at once cultivation and recreation.
But, independently of those cultivated pursuits which form a high order
of recreation, boyhood should never pass without the boy’s learning
several modes of recreation of the humbler kind. A parent or teacher
seldom does a kinder thing by the child under his care than when he
instructs it in some manly exercise, some pursuit connected with Nature
out of doors, or even some domestic game. In hours of fatigue, anxiety,
sickness, or worldly ferment, such means of amusement may delight the
grown-up man when other things would fail.
An indirect advantage, but a very considerable one, attendant upon
various modes of recreation, is, that they provide opportunities of
excelling in something to boys and men who are dull in things which form
the staple of education. A boy cannot see much difference between the
nominative and the genitive cases—still less any occasion for aorists—but
he is a good hand at some game or other; and he keeps up his
self-respect, and the respect of others for him, upon his prowess in that
game. He is better and happier on that account. And it is well, too,
that the little world around him should know that excellence is not all
of one form.
There are no details about recreation in this essay, the object here
being mainly to show the worth of recreation, and to defend it against
objections from the over-busy and the over-strict. The sense of the
beautiful, the desire for comprehending Nature, the love of personal
skill and prowess, are not things implanted in men merely to be absorbed
in producing and distributing the objects of our most obvious animal
wants. If civilisation required this, civilisation would be a failure.
Still less should we fancy that we are serving the cause of godliness
when we are discouraging recreation. Let us be hearty in our pleasures,
as in our work, and not think that the gracious Being Who has made us so
open-hearted to delight, looks with dissatisfaction at our enjoyment, as
a hard taskmaster might, who in the glee of his slaves could see only a
hindrance to their profitable working. And with reference to our
individual cultivation, we may remember that we are not here to promote
incalculable quantities of law, physic, or manufactured goods, but to
become men—not narrow pedants, but wide-seeing, mind-travelled men. Who
are the men of history to be admired most? Those whom most things
became—who could be weighty in debate, of much device in council,
considerate in a sick-room, genial at a feast, joyous at a festival,
capable of discourse with many minds, large-souled, not to be shrivelled
up into any one form, fashion, or temperament. Their contemporaries
would have told us that men might have various accomplishments and hearty
enjoyments, and not for that be the less effective in business, or less
active in benevolence. I distrust the wisdom of asceticism as much as I
do that of sensuality; Simeon Stylites no less than Sardanapalus.
* * * * *
_Ellesmere_. You alluded to Schiller at the beginning of the essay: can
you show me his own words? I have a lawyer’s liking for the best
evidence.
_Milverton_. When we go in, I will show you some passages which bear me
out in what I have made him say—at least, if the translation is faithful.
{53}
_Ellesmere_. I have had a great respect for Schiller ever since I heard
that saying of his about death, “Death cannot be an evil, for it is
universal.”
_Dunsford_. Very noble and full of faith.
_Ellesmere_. Touching the essay, I like it well enough; but, perhaps,
people will expect to find more about recreation itself—not only about
the good of it, but what it is, and how it is to be got.
_Milverton_. I do not incline to go into detail about the matter. The
object was to say something for the respectability of recreation, not to
write a chapter of a book of sports. People must find out their own ways
of amusing themselves.
_Ellesmere_. I will tell you what is the paramount thing to be attended
to in all amusements—that they should be short. Moralists are always
talking about “short-lived” pleasures: would that they were!
_Dunsford_. Hesiod told the world, some two thousand years ago, how much
greater the half is than the whole.
_Ellesmere_. Dinner-givers and managers of theatres should forthwith be
made aware of that fact. What a sacrifice of good things, and of the
patience and comfort of human beings, a cumbrous modern dinner is! I
always long to get up and walk about.
_Dunsford_. Do not talk of modern dinners. Think what a Roman dinner
must have been.
_Milverton_. Very true. It has always struck me that there is something
quite military in the sensualism of the Romans—an “arbiter bibendi”
chosen, and the whole feast moving on with fearful precision and
apparatus of all kinds. Come, come! the world’s improving, Ellesmere.
_Ellesmere_. Had the Romans public dinners? Answer me that. Imagine a
Roman, whose theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing for
enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business
of the day—I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding
himself up to make an after-dinner speech.
_Milverton_. I must allow that is rather a barbarous practice.
_Ellesmere_. If charity, or politics, cannot be done without such
things, I suppose they are useful in their way; but let nobody ever
imagine that they are a form of pleasure. People smearing each other
over with stupid flattery, and most of the company being in dread of
receiving some compliment which should oblige them to speak!
_Dunsford_. I should have thought, now, that you would always have had
something to say, and therefore that you would not be so bitter against
after-dinner speaking.
_Ellesmere_. No; when I have nothing to say, I can say nothing.
_Milverton_. Would it not be a pleasant thing if rich people would ask
their friends sometimes to public amusements—order a play for them, for
instance—or at any rate, provide some manifest amusement? They might,
occasionally with great advantage, abridge the expense of their dinners;
and throw it into other channels of hospitality.
_Ellesmere_. Ah, if they would have good acting at their houses, that
would be very delightful; but I cannot say that the being taken to any
place of public amusement would much delight me. By the way, Milverton,
what do you say of theatres in the way of recreation? This decline of
the drama, too, is a thing you must have thought about: let us hear your
notions.
_Milverton_. I think one of the causes sometimes assigned, that reading
is more spread, is a true and an important one; but, otherwise, I fancy
that the present decline of the drama depends upon very small things
which might be remedied. As to a love of the drama going out of the
human heart, that is all nonsense. Put it at the lowest, what a great
pleasure it is to hear a good play read. And again, as to serious
pursuits unfitting men for dramatic entertainments, it is quite the
contrary. A man, wearied with care and business, would find more change
of ideas with less fatigue, in seeing a good play, than in almost any
other way of amusing himself.
_Dunsford_. What are the causes then of the decline of the drama?
_Milverton_. In England, or rather in London,—for London is England for
dramatic purposes; in London, then, theatrical arrangements seem to be
framed to drive away people of sense. The noisome atmosphere, the
difficult approach, the over-size of the great theatres, the intolerable
length of performances.
_Ellesmere_. Hear! hear!
_Milverton_. The crowding together of theatres in one part of the town,
the lateness of the hours—
_Ellesmere_. The folly of the audience, who always applaud in the wrong
place—
_Dunsford_. There is no occasion to say any more; I am quite convinced.
_Milverton_. But these annoyances need not be. Build a theatre of
moderate dimensions; give it great facility of approach; take care that
the performances never exceed three hours; let lions and dwarfs pass by
without any endeavour to get them within the walls; lay aside all
ambition of making stage waves which may almost equal real Ramsgate waves
to our cockney apprehensions. Of course there must be good players and
good plays.
_Ellesmere_. Now we come to the part of Hamlet.
_Milverton_. Good players and good plays are both to be had if there
were good demand for them. But, I was going to say, let there be all
these things, especially let there be complete ventilation, and the
theatre will have the most abundant success. Why, that one thing alone,
the villainous atmosphere at most public places, is enough to daunt any
sensible man from going to them.
_Dunsford_. There should be such a choice of plays—not merely
Chamberlain-clipt—as any man or woman could go to.
_Milverton_. There should be certainly, but how is such a choice to be
made, if the people who could regulate it, for the most part, stay away?
It is a dangerous thing, the better classes leaving any great source of
amusement and instruction wholly, or greatly, to the less refined
classes.
_Dunsford_. Yes, I must confess it is.
Great part of your arguments apply to musical as well as to theatrical
entertainments. Do you find similar results with respect to them?
_Milverton_. Why, they are not attended by any means as they would be,
or made what they might be, if the objections I mentioned were removed.
_Dunsford_. What do you say to the out-of-door entertainments for a town
population?
_Milverton_. As I said before, my dear Dunsford, I cannot give you a
chapter of a “Book of Sports.” There ought, of course, to be parks for
all quarters of the town: and I confess it would please me better to see,
in holiday times and hours of leisure, hearty games going on in these
parks, than a number of people sauntering about in uncomfortably new and
unaccustomed clothes.
_Ellesmere_. Do you not see, Dunsford, that, like a cautious official
man, he does not want to enter into small details, which have always an
air of ridicule? He is not prepared to pledge himself to cricket, golf,
football, or prisoner’s bars; but in his heart he is manifestly a Young
Englander—without the white waistcoat. Nothing would please him better
than to see in large letters, on one of those advertising vans, “Great
match! Victoria Park!! Eleven of Fleet Street against the Eleven of
Saffron Hill!!!”
_Milverton_. Well, there is a great deal in the spirit of Young England
that I like very much, indeed that I respect.
_Ellesmere_. I should like the Young England party better myself if I
were quite sure there was no connection between them and a clan of sour,
pity-mongering people, who wash one away with eternal talk about the
contrast between riches and poverty; with whom a poor man is always
virtuous; and who would, if they could, make him as envious and as
discontented as possible.
_Milverton_. Nothing can be more strikingly in contrast with such
thinkers than Young England. Young Englanders, according to the best of
their theories, ought to be men of warm sympathy with all classes. There
is no doubt of this, that very seldom does any good thing arise, but
there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it, which sidles up
against the reality, mouths its favourite words as a third-rate actor
does a great part, under-mimics its wisdom, over-acts its folly, is by
half the world taken for it, goes some way to suppress it in its own
time, and, perhaps, lives for it in history.
_Ellesmere_. Well brought out, that metaphor, but I don’t know that it
means more than that the followers of a system do in general a good deal
to corrupt it, or that when a great principle is worked into human
affairs, a considerable accretion of human folly and falseness mostly
grows round it: which things some of us had a suspicion of before.
_Dunsford_. To go back to the subject. What would you do for country
amusements, Milverton? That is what concerns me, you know.
_Milverton_. Athletic amusements go on naturally here: do not require so
much fostering as in towns. The commons must be carefully kept: I have
quite a Cobbettian fear of their being taken away from us under some
plausible pretext or other. Well, then, it strikes me that a great deal
might be done to promote the more refined pleasures of life among our
rural population. I hope we shall live to see many of Hullah’s pupils
playing an important part in this way. Of course, the foundation for
these things may best be laid at schools; and is being laid in some
places, I am happy to say.
_Ellesmere_. Humph, music, sing-song!
_Milverton_. Don’t you observe, Dunsford, that when Ellesmere wants to
attack us, and does not exactly see how, he mutters to himself
sarcastically, sneering himself up, as it were, to the attack.
_Ellesmere_. You and Dunsford are both wild for music, from
barrel-organs upwards.
_Milverton_. I confess to liking the humblest attempts at melody.
_Dunsford_. I feel as Sir Thomas Browne tells us he felt, that “even
that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the
first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear
discovers; it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world
and creatures of God: such a melody to the ear as the whole world well
understood, would afford the understanding.”
_Milverton_. Apropos of music in country places, when I was going about
last year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty scene at one of
the towns. They had got up a band, which played once a week in the
evening. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the window of my room at
the end overlooked the open space they had chosen for their performances.
There was the great man of the neighbourhood in his carriage looking as
if he came partly on duty, as well as for pleasure. Then there were
burly tradesmen, with an air of quiet satisfaction, sauntering about, or
leaning against railings. Some were no doubt critical—thought that Will
Miller did not play as well as usual this evening. Will’s young wife,
who had come out to look again at him in his band dress (for the band had
a uniform), thought differently. Little boys broke out into imaginary
polkas, having some distant reference to the music: not without grace
though. The sweep was pre-eminent: as if he would say, “Dirty and sooty
as I am I have a great deal of fun in me. Indeed, what would May-day be
but for me?” Studious little boys of the free-school, all green
grasshopper-looking, walked about as boys knowing something of Latin.
Here and there went a couple of them in childish loving way, with their
arms about each other’s necks. Matrons and shy young maidens sat upon
the door-steps near. Many a merry laugh filled up the interludes of
music. And when evening came softly down upon us, the band finished with
“God save the Queen,” the little circle of those who would hear the last
note moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a shining of lights
through casement-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was the
rough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to adventure
anything by daylight, but now sang boldly out as he went homewards.
_Ellesmere_. Very pretty, but it sounds to me somewhat fabulous.
_Milverton_. I assure you—
_Ellesmere_. Yes, you were tired, had a good dinner, read a speech for
or against the corn-laws, fell asleep of course, and had this ingenious
dream, which, to this day, you believe to have been a reality. I
understand it all.
_Milverton_. I wish I could have many more such dreams.